Note: I am not going to go into what a migraine actually is. For that information I would recommend the Wikipedia article (useful, if rather heavy on the jargon), the Simple English Wikipedia article (much easier to read) or this video (less detailed, but concise and generally accurate). Various forms of the term “migraine” have been around since the 2nd century. We know that figures like Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi experienced migraines and it is generally agreed that Hildegard von Bingen did as well.* Some argue that Julius Caesar did as well, though that is less certain. At times the term has had broader meaning, covering a variety of conditions, and at other times, a more limited one, narrowing definitively to what we now call migraine in the 18th century. Even so, it is possible to trace people’s writing on what we now call migraine through several points in human history.

It is generally agreed that Hildegard von Bingen had migraines.["Hildegard von Bingen dictating to her secretary," Rupertsberg Codex,20th century facimile of 12th century original (now lost), source: Wikimedia Commons]

The Ebers Payrus (c. 1550 BCE) from Egypt provides the earliest extant reference** to symptoms we now connect with migraine. The next reference comes from the Hippocratic School in Greece, which provides the earliest description of migraine aura c. 200 BCE. Four hundred years later, the Chinese surgeon Hua T’o successfully used acupuncture to treat migraines. Around the same time, Aretaeus of Cappadocia was the first to attempt to classify headaches into three categories, the last of which, heterocrania, matches the symptoms of migraine fairly closely. Shortly thereafter, Galen of Pergamon also attempted to classify headaches and came up with the term “hemicrania,” meaning literally “half of the head.” This term has been used ever since. He may also have been the first to suggest that the pain came from blood vessels in the brain.

In the 9th century, the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi was the first to note that some women had migraines at times of hormone fluctuation. Shortly thereafter, a physician from Al-Andalus, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, described in his Kitab Al-Tasrif (The Method of Medicine) a procedure for migraine surgery that some still use today. In the 10th century, Ibn Sina agreed with Galen that the brain’s blood vessels had something to do with it but suggested that what they carried caused pain in the skull or the membrane underneath. In Christian Europe, the most prominent person to write about migraine was Hildegard von Bingen in the 12th century. After this, all significant writings on migraines come from the modern period. *For arguments regarding Hildegard von Bingen and migraines see this post. These arguments are made more complicated by the fact that though she wrote about migraines herself, the theory that she experienced them herself is entirely a modern one. **Some claim skulls from 7000 BCE that show trepanation (holes drilled into the skull) as even earlier evidence of migraine, especially as this was a remedy also recommended in the 17th century. While it is entirely possible that this was the case, the link is tenuous at best.

Esclarmonde de Foix (after 1151 – c. 1215) was the daughter and sister of two Counts of Foix and a prominent Cathar. Due to a similarity in their names, she is frequently conflated with her niece, Esclarmonde of Montségur. This is not helped by either the numerous legends that have sprung up around both women and are frequently attributed to a singular woman representing both or the occasional confusion of Catharism with various other religions.

Foix is on the left side of the map, south of Toulouse.[Routes des châteaux cathares, pinpin, Source: Wikimedia Commons]

There are, however, some things we know for sure as well as some things we can infer about her life. She was born Count Roger Bernard I of Foix and Cecile Trencavel. Her parents’ court, like many others in the Occitan region, stood between the Spanish kingdoms and Al-Andalus in the south and the rest of Europe in the north and east. Another result of this central positioning was a local tolerance for many varied expressions of religion. As a child, Esclarmonde would have had some access to the culture and learning of all of these. She married Jordan II of L’Isle Jourdain and had at least six children with him. It is likely that she turned fully to Catharism sometime before or during their marriage, but did not embrace it openly until after his death in 1200.* In 1204 she received the Consolamentum** and became a Cathar bonnefemme. Shortly thereafter she and her sister-in-law, Phillipa founded a girl’s school that also functioned as a place of retirement for elderly bonnefemmes. In 1207 she participated in (and possibly helped organize) a religious debate between leaders in the Cathar and Roman Catholic faiths.

Montsegur. One of the last Cathar castles to fall, it was besieged in 1243 and surrendered 10 months later in 1244, 15 years after the end of the Albigensian Crusade.[Montsegur, photographed by Emeraude, Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Two years after that failed, Pope Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in the Languedoc region. It is thought that Esclarmonde was the one responsible for the decision to fortify the castle at Monsegur. She did not survive the crusade, though exactly how or where she died is now unknown. Legend states that she flew off to Heaven as a dove. *Or he may have died a few years later. Huzzah for conflicting sources. Most say 1200 though. **This was the Cathar’s ceremony of spiritual baptism and the ritual by which one of the credentes became a bonhomme or bonnefemme. More on Cathar beliefs and religious hierarchy here.

The Gortyn Law Code, though fragmentary, is both the second-longest extant ancient Greek inscription and the most extensive ancient Greek law code outside of Athens. It dates from the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, when Gortyn was a significant city on Crete, though not yet the largest. It can be found on the circular walls of what used to be some kind of public building in the agora. The Code was written in the Dorian dialect and must be read boustrophedonically.* That is, like an ox plowing a field, with the first line going left to right, the next going back the other way, and so on.

This is a photo montage of the Code. The full-size version is here.[Photo Montage of Gortyn Code, photographed and put together by Volker Brandt][Source: Wikimedia Commons]

The Code contains provisions for the protection of a defendant before trial, but most of what remains concerns itself with property and family law. The punishment for rape or adultery was a fine leveled only against the male partner the size of which depended on the difference in social status of the partners and, in the case of adultery, the location of the crime. Unlike at Athens, a son could not become his parents’ kyrios (guardian). Indeed, one scholar argues that this Code abolished the power of the kyrios in Gortyn.** Women in Gortyn could own property in their own right and dispose of it without the permission of a kyrios or guardian. Gortyn and Sparta provide our only examples of Greek cities in which this was the case. A woman’s “dowry,” amounting to one half the amount her brothers each inherited belonged to her, not her husband. In the event of her divorce or widowhood, she kept “her property, whatever she brought to the marriage, and one-half the produce (if there is any) from her own property, and half of whatever she has woven in the house; also she is to have 5 staters if her husband is the cause of the divorce.”

The Gortyn Law Code doesn’t even remotely speak for the rest of Greece. It does, however, provide an interesting contrast to what little we know of many of the other cities. It also gives a small glimpse into another Greek city we don’t hear much about. * If your first reaction to this word was, “What,” you’re in good company. That was my reaction too. It comes from βους (bous, meaning “ox”) + στρεφειν (strephein, meaning “to turn”). Consider it your new word for the day and use it to impress somebody. Or just to sound smart. **For more on the function of the kyrios see here.

The Cathars, also known as Albigensians, were a religious group that arose out of the increasing religious fervor of the 11th and 12th centuries and lasted until the 14th century. They were concentrated mostly in what is now southern France and northern Italy, especially in the towns of Albi, Béziers, Carcassonne, and Toulouse. Like many other groups in this time period, Cathars attempted to take religion into their own hands and in doing so rejected the Catholic Church. As a result, most of what we know about their beliefs comes filtered through the words of their opponents.

This would be southeastern France, near the Spanish border. The blue squares are Cathar castles, while the red squares are towns.[Routes des châteaux cathares, pinpin, Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Catharism was dualist movement. In other words, Cathars believed in the existence of two Gods, one associated with good and spiritual things, the other with bad and materialistic things.* They considered the Catholic Church to be a fraud. Jesus could not have taken on material form because material things were evil. Thus the Resurrection could not have happened either. They did not believe in Purgatory or Hell. Rather, a person who had not lived a good enough life to go to Heaven would be reincarnated to try again. Cathars rejected oath-taking and condemned killing of any sort.** Marriage and sex, on the other hand, were only problematic insofar as they produced children, as this trapped another soul in a material body.*** Cathars divided themselves into two groups of people: the credentes and the bonhommes/bonnefemmes. The credentes were ordinary Cathars. The bonnes, meanwhile, were essentially the equivalent of clergy.**** These were older men and women who gave up their material goods to travel around the countryside in same-sex pairs. They refrained from sex and from eating more material foods like meat, eggs, and cheese. These were people considered good enough and experienced enough that they would go to heaven rather than be reincarnated again. The limitations of our sources will never allow us to sort truth from propaganda, but the picture we do see is of a group of people whose desire to take religion into their own hands and to hold it accountable led them to a radical opposition to the Catholic Church. *The idea that Satan was an angel who rebelled against God and fell from Heaven, thereby bringing evil into the world, is a form of mitigated, rather than absolute, dualism. In other words, the one responsible for materialism and evil is not a separate deity, co-eternal with the original, but rather was originally subordinate.** Similarly, they condemned the wearing of the cross as veneration of a material object as well as of a symbol of torture. ***This is not to say that women were considered lesser because they were the ones capable of producing children. A few groups of Cathars did believe this, but most didn’t. Generally both partners were considered equally culpable. Having children also wouldn’t prevent one from going to Heaven.****You may have also heard them called perfecti. This was a term used exclusively by their enemies. Similarly, the term “Cathar,” which comes from the Greek word for "pure ones," was primarily used by Catholics.

Cornelia Africana (c. 190 – 100 BCE), usually known as Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi was viewed for centuries as the ideal Roman matron. As a result of this and of the fact that nearly all of the earliest sources we have on her come from almost 200 years after her death,* anything written about her may tell us more about what the Romans idealized than about the woman herself.

Cornelia was the second daughter of Scipio Africanus, the general responsible for Hannibal’s defeat. She married Tiberius Gracchus the Elder and went on to have 12 children, only three of whom survived childhood: Sempronia, Tiberius, and Gaius.** Her husband died when she was still fairly young, leaving her to raise her children on her own. She quickly gained a reputation as an educated woman and a good hostess, surrounding herself with the intellectuals of the day. In keeping with her interest in learning, she gave her sons the best possible education. She received several offers of marriage, including one from Ptolemy VIII of Egypt, but turned them all down.*** When her sons were grown, she involved herself in their politics, advising them on the proper actions to take.

Those who wrote about her were quick to paint her as the best mother in Rome. She was fertile, giving birth to twelve children, even if only three survived childhood. Her intelligence and interest in learning are shown almost exclusively with reference to the education of her sons. Even her involvement in their political struggles is portrayed as being entirely for their own wellbeing rather than any interest in politics on her part. After their deaths she is shown not weeping for them, but rejoicing that they had been good men and had died well.

The story that Cornelia told a friend who was proud of her jewelry that her children were her jewels was probably a later invention. Even so, this is one of the few pieces of art that remembers that she raised three children, not two.[Cornelia, Mutter der Gracchen, 1785, Angelica Kauffmann][Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Source: Wikimedia Commons]

How much of this is actually true and how much was made up is uncertain, but her a significant amount of it was almost certainly based in fact. Even though later writers sought to show her acting only in the service of the men in her life, Cornelia herself shines through as a brilliant woman for her own sake and in her own right. *With one possible exception: two fragments of a letter purported to have been written by her to her younger son in 122 BCE. **Unsurprisingly, a later writer completely ignored Sempronia’s survival and claimed that only two of Cornelia’s children survived infancy. ***This action may not have been for the sake of her reputation, but it certainly enhanced it by emphasizing her status as an univira.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw significantly greater interest in religious matters, not only from people within the church, but also from the laity and not just the powerful laity. More and more people began taking their religious lives into their own hands. They began to demand not only that their clerics live more holy lives, but also that they be properly educated in theology. New religious orders were founded by the dozens. What people actually believed became more important than the simple declaration that one was Christian. The rising interest in people’s actual beliefs and behaviors led many people to reexamine their faith and to attempt to deal with the problems they saw in the church. Some of these reformers succeeded in their aims. Several new orders were founded to counter what they considered a softening of morality. The Cistercians emphasized austerity over glory. The Augustinians rejected the Benedictine Rule and founded their own communities based on the words of St. Augustine. The Franciscans (though not entirely purposefully founded as a religious order) found themselves serving the religious needs of growing cities.

The Dominican Order was specifically founded to counter heresy. This church (notice that it has no transept) was built so the friars could talk with Cathars on holy ground and attempt to persuade them.[Jacobin Church in Toulouse, early 13th century, photographed by me]

The thing is, not all reformers were accepted. Where the Augustinians and Franciscans were recognized, the Lollards, Waldensians, and Cathars were considered heretics. All of these people were part of the popular desire individual involvement in religion, some even demanding access to religious texts even for those not literate in Latin. Whether each was declared acceptable by the Church was as much a matter of politics as theology. All of these things contributed to the widespread founding of universities. Priests needed to be trained, not just to meet the demands of the laity for educated priests,** but also so that they could deal with ideas that the Church had declared heretical. This was also a time of increased interest in learning in general. The universities provided education, while their religious foundation allowed people to take part in the rising religious fervor of the age while keeping an eye on people whose ideas might otherwise become heretical. *The phrase seems to have been coined by Gary Dickson in “Religious Enthusiasm in the Medieval West and the Second conversion of Europe” in Religious Enthusiasm.**Though this was a major factor.

Sources/Further Reading:Cook, William R. and Ronald B Herzman. The Medieval Worldview: an Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Winks, Robin W. and Teofilo F. Ruiz. Medieval Europe and the World: From Late Antiquity to Modernity, 400-1500. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Unlike the Athenians, the Romans did not believe that the worst thing one could do to a widow was to leave her unmarried. Remarriage, whether after divorce or the death of a spouse, was certainly common, especially in the late Republic and the Empire, but the perception of the status of widowhood was different. This came partially out of the fact that Roman women were not so economically dependent. They could inherit in their own names and own property in their own right. After the passing of the Julian Marriage Laws, a widow with three or four children was free from guardianship. Even a widow still under guardianship had a certain amount of freedom, especially if she had property. It is worth noting, however, that a widow could still be accused of adultery.*

Socially, Romans held the univira as the ideal. This was a woman who only married one man. Originally this referred to a woman who came to her marriage a virgin and predeceased her first husband. Later on, however, it became more associated with widows (and possibly divorced women) who refused to remarry. This was something that could be written as praise on a woman’s tombstone and some upper class women, such as Agrippina the Elder** and Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, were specifically lauded because of their univira status. This is not to say that remarriage was considered a bad thing. Remaining single was simply considered better. Unsurprisingly, there was a certain amount of tension between the ideal of the married state presented by the Julian Marriage Laws and the ideal of the univira. As part of an attempt to increase the birthrate, the Laws rewarded remarriage after divorce or widowhood and discouraged both men and women from remaining single. The ideal of the univira, however, remained strong. To remain single was the social ideal. To remarry was the course encouraged by the law. The two ideas remained in tension for the next several hundred years. *By the 2nd century at least, a father of a married woman had preference in accusing (and attacking) his daughter if he caught her in the act of adultery (but only if he caught her in the act). The father of a widow had no such preference. **I have seen it argued that Tiberius prevented Agrippina from remarrying despite her own desires. Most scholars, however, agree that it was her own decision.

No pictures of Anna herself seem to exist, so have some images of her parents, Alexios I Komnenos and Eirene (Irene) Doukaina instead.[Alexios I, 11th century, source: Wikimedia Commons][Coin with the image of Christ on one side and Eirene Doukaina on the other, 11th or 12th century, Classical Numismatic Group, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Anna Komnene (1083-c.1153*) was a Byzantine princess now best known for writing the Alexiad, her chronicle of her father’s life/exploits, leading some to call her the first female historian. Her history is also the only work to provide a Byzantine point of view on the First Crusade. She did, however, much more with her life than that. She was born the eldest child of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. Anna was highly educated, having studied literature, rhetoric, history, various sciences, and more with the encouragement of her parents.** It is entirely possible that she was able to quote Homer and the Bible from memory when writing the Alexiad. In 1097 she married Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger, a general, historian, and nobleman. The couple eventually had four children together. Sometime after her marriage, her father put her in charge of the biggest hospital in Constantinople. Not only was she a very successful administrator, but she was apparently also a very good physician and eventually became an expert on gout. As the eldest child of the Emperor, she may have felt entitled to the throne. At the very least it’s clear that she felt her eldest brother (John, four years younger than she) was not a good ruler. Her mother agreed and supported Anna and Nikephoros in opposition to her son John. It is likely that Anna was involved in a plot to murder her brother at their father’s funeral in 1118.*** The plan was discovered and John forced his sister to retire from politics. In 1137 Nikephoros died, leaving Anna to retire to a monastery. She undertook to complete the history her husband had started (possibly only barely, considering the work is now attributed entirely to her), calling the finished work the Alexiad. Her brother may have kept the throne, but it is through her eyes that he is remembered and he measures up poorly to her father. *The date of her death is actually unknown, though 1153 is the most common date given. At the very least, she was still alive in 1148. **Georgios Tornikes claimed in his funeral oration for her that she had to study some things in secret to avoid facing her parents’ disapproval for studying things considered “dangerous.” Anna Komnene herself, however, neither said nor implied anything of the sort in any of her works. Given that, Tornikes’ claim seems possible, but unlikely. ***There is some debate over whether her husband Nikephoros was involved as well.

Citizen women in Sparta, unlike women in Athens,* could and did own property in their own right and in their own names. According to Aristotle, two-fifths of the land in Sparta was owned by women. Wealthy Spartan women also seem to have owned horses. Unlike women in certain other parts of Ancient Greece where women could own property, they did not need the permission of a kyrios to dispose of it. Part of this may have had something to do with the expectation that Spartan men should spend much of their time off at war. Spartan women, meanwhile, were educated with the expectation that they should not only be strong mothers of strong children, but also that they should be able to be in charge of a household and presumably the land attached to it. Given that, it seems likely that most of the land belonging to men also ended up under the practical control of women for certain periods of time. The main way Spartan women acquired property seems to have been through inheritance and through their dowries. The problem of the dowry in Sparta is a complicated one because the sources can’t seem to agree on what that meant and all of them were written by non-Spartans. Some people argue that the dowry was a gift to the woman herself on her marriage. Others would say that it couldn’t be called a dowry at all, as it was an inheritance gift to the woman and never passed into her husband’s control. No existing source tells us how this was thought of in Sparta itself. Some women from Sparta are known to us now because of what they owned, sometimes in addition to what they did. Cynisca and Euryleonis were Olympic victresses, not because they themselves appeared at the games, but because they owned and trained horses that won chariot races. Arachidamia and her daughter-in-law Aegesistrata were the wealthiest two people in Sparta in the 3rd century BCE, giving them significant political power that women in most other parts of Greece would not have been able to hold. *Property in Athens legally belonged to the head of the oikos, no matter who had brought it into the household. Though a woman may have had practical ownership over certain personal items, they legally belonged to her kyrios (guardian). Pretty much every example of significant property listed in a woman’s name at Athens was only held as security against the possibility that her husband might have to return her dowry.

The said church.[Lescar Cathedral from the north-west, photographed by me, 2014]

The cathedral* at Lescar, Notre Dame de l’Assomption de Lescar, in the Béarn region of France was originally built in the early 12th century. The town was built at the beginning of the 11th century along the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. In 1120, Bishop Gui de Lons started construction of the cathedral in the Romanesque style. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the church served as the burial place for the monarchs of Navarre.

Notice how many of these are Queens of Navarre.["Tombe rois Navarre," photographed by Jibi44, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Protestant violence in the 16th century damaged the church and led to the loss of its relics, those of St. Galactoire.** Several of the funerary monuments were lost and part of the roof fell in. The church was rebuilt in the 17th century. As a result, most of the extant floor tiles and mosaics and all of the stained glass windows come from after this time period.

I like the guy's hat. I do have to wonder about his hunting horn's apparent levitation abilities though.[Floor mosaic from the north side of the apse,12th century or Gallo-Roman][photographed by Jibi44, Source:Wikimedia Commons]

“Most” is an important word. The floor mosaics in the apse survived. There is some debate about whether they date to the 12th century or come from the earlier Gallo-Roman town and were reused as the floor of the cathedral. A mosaic inscription in the floor mentioning Gui de Lons supports the former hypothesis but does not confirm it.

Again with the weirdly positioned hunting horn.[Floor mosaic from the south side of the apse, 12th century or Gallo-Roman][photographed by me, 2014]

A legend from the area also supports this theory, though how true it may be is unknown. According to the story, the archer in the mosaic came from Al-Andalus and had lost his leg fighting against the encroaching Christian kingdoms. A replacement was created for him and he eventually went back into battle, where this time he was captured and ended up the slave of Gui de Lons. A friendship grew between them and the bishop soon freed him. What’s more, he preserved his friend’s image in the floor of his cathedral. How true the story is we don’t know, but it does show us some interesting things. The archer is not hindered in either the mosaic or the legend by the loss of his leg. He goes from warrior to slave to friend and hunting partner. He passes from Muslim territory to Christian, but whether he converted is never mentioned, at least in the versions of the story presented today. *If one wanted to be really technical about things one would actually call it a “proto-cathedral” because it’s no longer the seat of a bishop, but almost nobody cares to be that specific. It was at one point the seat of a bishop. Therefore, most people call it a cathedral. **What a name.

Sources/Further Reading:La Cathédral de Lescar - Notre Dame en Béarn (Note: This website is all in French. Even if you don't read French, it has some photos worth looking at.)Lescar Cathedral - WikipediaCathédral Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption de Lescar - WikipediaGui de Lons - Wikipedia (Note: I link to the French article here and not the English one because the latter has no information of interest.)Lescar - Wikipedia (French article)Lescar - Wikipedia (English article. Once again, the French article has more and better information.)I also have some photographs of one of the informational placards put up by the Tourist Office of Lescar if anyone wants to see them.